Keith’s Tablet Market Wrap – Sept

There’s no doubt the tablet market is exploding – it’s been a month of comings and goings; we say farewell to the iconic Apple CEO Steve Jobs and the two tablets dramatically pulled from the Australian market – the Samsung Galaxy Tab and HP TouchPad and welcome Googarola (Google’s foray into mobile hardware market – or rather the patent market?)

Here at OomphHQ, we’ve had our busiest month to date launching a number of new iPad titles. It’s apparent that all brands are becoming publishers and tablets provide a platform to enrich engagement and interaction.

“What a month it’s been; Google buys Motorola for $12 Billion USD and becomes a tablet maker and tablet OS vendor. HP scraps its $1.2 Billion USD investment in tablet maker and tablet OS vendor Palm/WebOS. These are big, bold moves – it’s the clash of the titans for the future of personal computing. The future of personal computing has not being fought out in such spectacular fashion since the Netscape/Microsoft browser battles of the late nineties. In this bizarre universe, Apple is setting the rules and as a result everything is getting more Apple like (closed source, curated app stores, single vendor owns the stack from hardware to software) e.g. Microsoft buying Nokia, Google buying Motorola and HP buying Palm/WebOS, RIM/Blackberry buying QNX, Samsung being sued by Apple and forced to remove the Galaxy Tab from the Australian market.

It’s an expensive game to play in and HP decided to jump out of the ring and sell services to everyone else instead. How you interact with the internet, information and content is being shaped right now by some very smart people and the tablet crazy consumers. With the clear domination of the iPad in the tablet market, even the loss of Steve Jobs is likely not to hamper their clear lead.

Welcome iOS5

The next major software update for both the iPhone and iPad is iOS5 due for launch in the next few months. As a registered Apple developer, Oomph has been working with the beta version for months and is ready to take advantage of the new features. Most important of all is Newsstand, which is like an app store just for newspapers and magazines.

One of the highlights of Newsstand includes recurring subscriptions and background downloading, meaning your iPad will automatically download (over wifi only) your newspaper or magazine subscriptions within seconds of them being published. So when you grab your iPad in the morning, your favourite magazines will be ready to read. These are great times for tablet users.”